As a Texas mother of 3 and as one of your strong supporters, I urge you to join my U.S. Congressman Rep. Michael Burgess along with Rep. Louie Gohmert in opposition of H.R. 4174. Please Veto H.R. 4174 that was passed on Dec. 19, 2018, by Congress. H.R. 4174, known as the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act (FEPA), is a very dangerous bill that is a complete invasion of privacy for all students from Pre-School through the Workforce (P-20W), in classrooms across America.

During the Presidential Campaign, you were very clear that you were against Common Core; thank you!!

Additionally, at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, seen here, Ann Marie Banfield did a great job of explaining that “Common Core is more than just a set of standards, it is the data mining of personal data of students within this total redesign of public education under Obama. He gutted the FERPA law, so now parents do not know when student’s information is leaving the school, and they no longer have consent.” To which you said... “isn’t it ridiculous, you could have local education, with local people, your local schools, and you don’t have a problem with some bureaucrat in Washington that just wants to make money.” I said to myself, thank you Lord, he gets it.

Ann Marie went on to ask… “my question is about the data mining, what would you do to protect the privacy of students now that Obama has pretty much opened that up?” Again, you correctly responded, “I would close all loopholes, you have to have privacy, you have to have privacy, so I would close all loopholes. But most importantly, I would get everything out of Washington because that’s where it is all emanating from”. I said, Halleluja!! This man gets it.

While FEPA itself doesn’t expressly establish a formal data system with a central repository, the bill’s mandates regarding linking and sharing data among multiple federal agencies and thousands of bureaucrats will create essentially the same result: a de facto national database.

The federal government is demonstrably incompetent at data security; moreover, it routinely ignores the overwhelming data it already has showing the ineffectiveness of many (most) federal programs. There is no reason to believe an even more enormous trove of data can be secured, or that it will actually change government behavior in any meaningful way.

Most importantly, collecting and holding massive amounts of data about an individual has an intimidating effect on the individual—even if the data is never used. This fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual and government. Citizen direction of government cannot happen when the government sits in a position of intimidation of the individual.

President Trump, I have great hope that you will stand by your words and Veto H.R. 4174.